Play-to-earn (P2E)

Play-to-earn usually relies on a dual-token design: a utility and reward token, high-emission and spendable inside the game, and a governance token with limited supply. In Axie Infinity these are SLP (the reward) and AXS (governance and staking). Playable assets are minted as NFTs, combined and traded. For the economy to hold, the design needs sinks that remove tokens at the rate they are emitted; the imbalance between emission and removal is the model's structural risk and the main design lesson from its first wave. A scholarship model also appeared, where an asset owner lends them to a player who shares the earnings; in Yield Guild Games the documented split was roughly 70% for the player, 20% for the manager and 10% for the guild.

It demonstrated real player ownership over assets and opened up digital labor economies, with notable uptake in the Philippines and Venezuela in 2021. It is the central concept of the web3 gaming economy and the origin of the debate on tokenomics sustainability.